


cloying

by enmity



Category: Persona 2, Persona Series
Genre: Gen, Post-P2EP (specifically Tatsuya's Scenario)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 13:30:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12458778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: Her consolation prize.





	cloying

**Author's Note:**

> the problem w running out of ideas is that eventually ur true self shines thru and while listening 2 voca u end up writing smth literally no one in the world wants. help me lol. no pairings tagged but it's p2ep and tatsuya's scenario so hm (the summary is intentionally misleading though, i literally wish)

Suou takes his coffee sweet, doped up on packets of sugar and creamer piled so high, it almost nauseates her to look at. This is something Shiori wouldn’t have learned through any other way but chance; it shouldn’t be so off-putting to acknowledge that for all the secondhand knowledge she has on him, gathered up in the back of her mind in a pile that amounts to nothing, some facts only reveal themselves upon closer inspection. A person, she is forced to remember, is more than a cobble of almost-truths and hearsay, patched hastily together between bits and pieces of speculation and his father’s hesitant answers to her questions, frequent and shamelessly forward when she thinks of them in retrospective past tense. It’s almost enough to send heat blooming underneath her cheeks, but _almost_ is the key word.

They’re sitting across each other in a tidy corner of the cafe, her hands laid awkwardly still on her knees. Shiori ordered tea; she likes hers green and bitter and boiling, steam rising from the surface to dampen the air between them, cool and stilted as it is. Suou’s either contently oblivious to her staring or feigning ignorance of it out of politeness. Thinking this, she looks up flutteringly from watching him stir a tragic amount of sugar into his cup, and offers a smile – shy, self-conscious – instead a dry suggestion of whether he’d like some milk to go with _that_ , as well.

It takes Suou a solid three seconds before he returns the gesture, haltingly. Somehow, it eases her. Ah, of course, she imagines replying, tilting her head sweetly, there’s no need to look so embarrassed; she already insisted on paying, after all.

(Tatsuya, she thinks vaguely, wouldn’t have smiled at all at the offer, sincerity or not. One similarity: their honesty shows, despite their best efforts. She can appreciate that in people; finds it endearing precisely because she’s not much of one herself. She built a cage around her heart under the mistaken belief the sacrifice would’ve been worth it, whatever _it_ was; and when it turned out otherwise, when Sudou died and Tatsuya left and she woke up, prone and with her eyes facing the bright unfamiliar ceiling of the hospital room – there was just her, alone, with the inability to remember how to be anyone but the person she had been up until now.)

Shiori holds her cup with both palms, and swallows gingerly. Her throat aches with a comforting burn, and the second time she smiles, she can’t help the brittle edge it takes on. “I’m glad you made it today, Suou-san. I know you don’t often get to take time off from work.” She sets down the cup, and, ignoring all the other less defensible things she could be apologizing to him about: “I’m terribly sorry for making you set aside your afternoon for this.”

“I—It’s fine, Miyashiro-kun. Really,” is his measured reply. “With everything that’s happened, I – ”

“ – I know I could’ve just called and left it at that, but.” And she lets herself trail away before she can say, what? I didn’t want to seem rude. I didn’t want to pretend I had gotten your contact number through the women hiding in shadows behind the stage curtain, rather than … elsewhere. Of course, most of all, I wanted to make myself feel better by having this conversation face-to-face. But none of those things are what she can say. “I just felt like … this was the kind of thing that, however trivial, I needed to tell in person. I’m glad you understand.”

“Well, of course,” he says evenly, taking in his drink, and she’s glad that for all his evident sloppiness in maintaining a front, his gaze is still unreadable through the red cover of his glasses. She wouldn’t be able to handle it, whatever it was that hid behind people’s eyes that relayed such unguarded candor, whether they wanted it to or not.

“I wanted to thank you. For all that you did. I must’ve caused a great deal of trouble back then, I’m sure, though I can hardly remember it now.” She takes care to soften her expression.

“You weren’t … It wasn’t any fault of your own. The expenses were covered for by the hospital’s manager himself; all I did was help bring you there.” There’s something patronizing she can sense underneath the way he adds, “So don’t beat yourself up too much over it, Miyashiro-kun.”

“Yes,” she says, and slides her hand to lay it still on the table. “I’ll try. It does feel better hearing that from someone else.” Which isn’t true, but it’s the kind thing to say; she can infer it as a correct decision.

“Thank you,” Suou settles to say, after a suspended moment that feels too long to be a second. “I’m sorry. I never know what to say in times like this.”

“You don’t need to say anything at all,” Shiori replies, her words ringing with a sincerity she thought she had forgotten how to emulate.

In the coldness of mid-autumn the afternoon sunlight is still so scintillating; no one believes in tricks of the light anymore, but when her hand moves to reach for his still one she pretends it belongs to someone else, pretends she’s made an honest mistake and, and –

and when she hesitates at the last moment her fingertips close in around her palm instead, and then her nails are dragging across the table as she pulls herself to stand up. Her voice perfectly tepid as she says, “I should be going. Thank you for listening, Suou-san. I … appreciate it.”

He doesn’t have anything to offer to that, words or otherwise. She tips her head politely. She’s already taking a step, leaving him behind when she looks over her shoulder abruptly, and, despite herself, hating the way her voice turns honeyed with a fondness she would rather have forgotten –

just like that.

Her mouth twists into something too pitiful to be called a smile. She swallows down the bitter taste pooling in her mouth, and past the heat already gathering unspilled behind her eyes, she isn’t surprised, not a single bit, and as she turns to face Suou once more, standing over him with her face a perfect display of calm, Shiori thinks perhaps that’s her consolation prize above all else.

“One more thing; your brother, Tatsuya-kun… is he doing well?”

**Author's Note:**

> part 2 where shiori runs into maya at their apartment coming soon (srry)


End file.
